A flight attendant welcomes Diane aboard and helps her find the right seat. She’s going to visit her only child, who has finally agreed to see her for the first time in years. Ray will be in San Diego through October, working some temp job to pay for a sublet. Diane assumes he’s going through a midlife crisis. Since his divorce, he’s lived in various towns and cities throughout the borderlands. Two weeks in Juárez, three in Yuma, a few months in Matamoros. Apparently, the threat of violence doesn’t bother him. He’s doing research for a book, though Diane thinks it’s unlikely he’ll ever finish it. At forty, he’s published very little; just a dozen or so stories and a handful of reviews. His ex-wife got tired of waiting for him to make it as a writer. Belle took their daughter and remarried within a year.
Diane doesn’t blame her. She blames herself. Ray’s childhood was filled with a certain kind of emotional terror, especially after his father left. It followed a consistent pattern: she would lose all control, and he would completely shut down for a necessary period of time. The worst part must have been the screaming. She’d bend down, get close to his ears, then unleash the demons. He was a disappointment. Something was seriously wrong with him. Once, she even called him a fag. Through it all, she reminded him of the sacrifices she’d had to make. Later, out of guilt and self-pity, she sometimes cried so hysterically through the night that he couldn’t sleep. The next morning, she’d try to make up and then move on as if nothing cruel had happened. Ray listened silently to the promises that were made, but even she didn’t believe the lies that dripped off her tongue like sweet tea. It was a confusing childhood. If her son grew up terrified of the world, was there any wonder why he couldn’t connect with it as an adult?
On the plane, Diane orders another cocktail and opens a little-known magazine that contains Ray’s latest short story. The binding is cheap and there are errors in the editor’s note. She tries to read her son’s work, but it’s too strange and depressing. Really, who wants to think about the macabre reflections of a Tijuana man about to be executed? Why couldn’t he try to write a normal novel, or a children’s book, or at least something that people might actually buy? Over the phone, he admitted wanting to write a story about her. Surely it would also be too ugly for her to read.
She closes her eyes and tries to remember what it felt like to be close to her son. Her memory must stretch all the way back to his infancy. There he is, Ray, her baby, asleep in his crib. And then he’s crying out for her. There, there, she says. She feeds him in a rocking chair and quietly sings the words to a lullaby just recently learned. She was a good mother, at least for a while. What happened? Where did the rage come from? Why did it all go so wrong?
The plane lands in San Diego. There are a few scattered clouds in the air, but they’ll soon float away to the ungraced, interior part of the border. Diane checks her makeup in the bathroom. At sixty-five, she fights her age with Botox and plastic surgery that she can’t really afford. Ray is waiting to welcome her at the baggage claim carousel. They hug awkwardly. It’s not the kind of greeting that either of them wants, but at least it’s something.
It’s a start.
D. Seth Horton’s fifth edited book, Road to Nowhere and Other New Stories from the Southwest, was published last year by the University of New Mexico Press. His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in over twenty publications, including the Michigan Quarterly Review, the North Dakota Quarterly, and Glimmer Train. He is a book reviewer for the El Paso Times, and he teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Virginia.
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